This month brought in a lot of digital marketing updates both for social media and SEO. Whether you’re in the travel business, ecommerce, or some other industry that uses digital marketing, we have useful social media marketing news and SEO news for you here.

6 Digital Marketing Updates to Watch Out for

1. LinkedIn Improves Transparency Features for Advertisements

LinkedIn Pages will now have a tab showing the ads a page is running for the last six months. Users can click on the ads to see the advertisements the page is running, but the advertiser won’t be charge for the clicks and it won’t impact their campaign reports.

This new feature is in line with LinkedIn’s efforts to make users feel secure, such as the previously launched feature that allows members to change their ad viewing settings.

Facebook started introducing transparency measures for ads just a few months ago after several social media marketing news articles informed the world of how their ads were used for political manipulation. Since LinkedIn is a professional work and networking platform, it doesn’t seem that they would face similar issues but it’s good to see them taking proactive measures to protect users.

2. Google’s Mobile-First Indexing to be Used on all New Sites Starting July 1

Google just announced that all new websites or those still “unknown to Google” will be indexed using the search engine’s mobile-first criteria by default starting the first of June.

Older websites already on mobile-first indexing will continue to be indexed as such while those not yet on mobile-first indexing will continue on desktop-first indexing until they are ready for mobile. Older sites not on mobile-first indexing will be notified via Google’s Search Console once they are considered ready for mobile indexing.

If you want to check how your website was indexed, just enter your site’s URL on Google’s URL Inspection Tool.

3. LinkedIn’s Ad Targeting Set to Improve after Acquisition of Data Personalization Company

Drawbridge, an AI data analytics company, was recently purchased by LinkedIn in an effort to refine their ad targeting capacity.

LinkedIn’s accumulated data doesn’t seem as in-depth as the data points Facebook accumulated through user profiles and surfing activity. But LinkedIn’s purpose as a professional and business networking platform can give it an edge for recruitment, B2B, and professional advancement marketing promotions. I will write more about this social media marketing news once there’s more info on how effective their ad targeting is.

4. Google Now Shows Hotel Pricing Charts in SERP

A few weeks ago at Google Marketing Live, the search engine giant launched its consolidated travel planning tool ‘Trips.’ Further back in March, they introduced a hotel and vacation rental booking site.

From the looks of it, Google is ramping up its travel arsenal. The recent move of hotel price graphs into the SERP confirms this.

Now travelers can see the historical pricing trends of the hotel they’re checking right on the search results. Here’s what that looks like based on a search for “New York Marriott Marquis”

5. Creepy or Useful? Infographic Shows How People Feel About Personalized Ads

Retargeted ads that follow you around the web could be useful or creepy, depending on your perspective.

Ads that offer you a discount for a product or service you put in a shopping cart but never actually bought might make you feel like you scored a deal. If you’re protective about your online privacy, such ads might make you feel anxious—regardless of how good a deal it is.

Question is how do people actually feel about personalized ads and retargeted ads? One team sought to find out.

Signs.com surveyed more than 1000 consumers to get their take on personalized ads and where they draw the line between useful and invasive ads.

For starters, 87.4% out of 1000 responders are familiar with personalized ads. The fact that they’re familiar with the concept suggests they won’t be easily creeped out by such advertisements. Regardless of familiarity, 52% think these ads are unethical.

As expected, 90% saw ads based on their browser history while 81.7% saw ads related to their purchase history. What’s surprising though is 59% received an ad for a “recently discussed item,” which draws into question how some social platforms might be “listening in” on conversations or messages.

Since people feel personalized ads are unethical, what should advertisers do? If we base it on the percentage of what the survey respondents did online, it looks like sales emails work a tad better. About 24.5% of people surveyed clicked through a sales email, while 24.3% used a coupon they received via email. Conversely, only 16.4% clicked on social media ads.

It’s not so cut and dry though. Social media ads are still effective, according to the survey’s findings.

6. Use VPN for Local SEO Use

Search Engine Watch previously published a piece using VPNs to make local SEO work easier. For instance, you might be in the United States but the customers you’re targeting are over on the other side of the pond. So if you do a Google Search, you’ll see the results from the USA not UK.

To make your SEO efforts work, you need to know exactly what your local market is searching for, and what the competition is like in that area. The products and services you offer might not change much wherever your customers are, but the keywords, demand, and competition are different. Using a VPN will help you get around the search limitations so you can do an accurate research on your market.

A VPN can also help you bypass Google’s reCaptcha flag that comes up when you do too many searches, and access websites from countries that block IPs that from foreign countries.

While there are free VPNs available, they’re not always reliable. NordVPN is cheap at just $2.99 per month but there are cheaper VPNs available. The cost depends on how much you’re going to use it and what features you need. Check out this comparison of available VPNs for more information.

Stay Tuned for More Search Engine and Social Media Marketing News

Come back again next month for another dispatch of digital marketing updates and social media marketing news

If you’ve got a tip on search engine optimization, content, and social media changes that affect online marketing, chime in here or chat us on our social channels.